Carding in textile mills is an old and well developed art used in processing natural and synthetic fibers. Carding allows the opening of the fibers such as cotton, completely, even to individual fibers, and it allows the cleaning of the fibers by removing the dirt, seeds, leaves, neps, unusable short fibers and other non-lint content prior to production of a sliver which is a continuous, untwisted fibrous strand formed from the fibers.
The "unusable" fibrous materials collected from conventional carding apparatus during processing may contain dirt, seeds, twigs, bits of fiber and other debris which may be commingled with a percentage of usable fibers. This "unusable waste" is usually removed from the card on a routine schedule and disposed of as trash. Over a year's time a considerable amount of usable fibers is discarded in this manner unseparated from the unusable trash. Attempts have been made to reclaim the usable fiber but prior to the present invention no practical continuous process or economical apparatus or methods have been found for this purpose.
Therefore, it is an objective of the present invention to provide an economically feasible method and apparatus for extracting fibers from carding waste and reintroducing these extracted fibers to the carding apparatus in a consistent manner, and to eliminate the emission of dust, short fiber and non-lint particles in processes subsequent to carding.
It is another objective of the present invention to provide apparatus which will remove substantially all (75%+) of the non-lint content from the fiber stock.
It is still another objective of the present invention to utilize 99%+ of the fiber stock for processing into slivers or other usable forms having optimum quality.
It is yet another objective the present invention to improve open-end and ring spinning by obtaining slivers with consistent fiber blends and minimum non-lint content.
It is also an objective of the present invention to provide carding apparatus and methods which will run efficiently and will require minimum maintenance.